"Namaste" but WHY? - Vedic Science behind the traditional Namaste!!

In this Corona Widespread, every single soul fears to be in physical contact, to gather around and to meet people. One of the most common contact with other person is to do handshakes. When people meet, they do handshakes, but in these tough times, even World Health Organisation advices Public to NOT be in physical contact and specifically NOT to do handshakes. They've even adviced us to do the India's traditional 'Namaste' or 'Namaskar' or 'Pranam' to avoid getting risk of CoViD-19 infection. But when we do namaste: joining both the hands and bow down; Why we do this specific posture and What does it actually mean?

Well, the Sanskrit breakdown of the word namaste literally is 'namah-te' where namah means to bow down and te is a pronoun referring the person we are bowing down to. The Oxford Dictionary states namaste as bowing down showing respect but the Vedic Sciences coin that term beyond respecting someone. There are many scientific and mystical concepts of why we bow down by ' holding our hands and lower the body' 

When we bow down and hold our hands together to namaskar someone, our all five fingers, who resemble five basic human emotions- joy, fear, sadness, disgust and anger; are all togetherly pressed and pressured to show that we are NOT judging the other person by our current emotions and when we bow down, we mean that we are not judging the person by seeing the 'physical body' of him or her. We want to know their inner being and not the outer 'cover' of it. We deeply respect that person directly respecting his or her inner soul. Moreover, when we directly handshake the person, our mind will quickly make nonsense conclusions about the person by 'judging' their bodies, clothing, face and other outer aspects! Our five fingers also resemble five universal elements namely Earth (Matter), Fire (Purest Energy Form), Space, Water and Air. When we do the namaste posture, we show the person that in our hands, we've aligned all fundamental blocks of creation and we are in perfect geometry and extremely still or balanced - The way how everything should be!

Vedic Science believes that every being holds an IMMENSE potential inside and as I wrote earlier, every god is a god due to his actions. The ultimate god is Nature and the Unified Consciousness. Its just that in a human form, that consciousness has separated itself to meet the higher bliss. Its like we all are small droplets of water falling from sky, droplets who realise life and its core truth, falls faster into the infinite river. Likewise, we all humans are tiny consciousnesses and by being solely unified or by mixing with the ultimate consciousness (infinite river), we are finally complete! So, by bowing down, you are adoring the person's deep consciousness that is in the same path as of yours, both are droplets of the same kind, living their lives separately, keeping their core motive to finally meet the ultimate force at the end!! Isn't this amazing? When we bow, we bow to the infinite force that resides inside each human body. Bowing down also completely crushes our inner ego and inner 'selfness'. Why to be egoistic if all lives around you: too fat or too thin, too angry or deeply blissful, is lastly the same kind of droplet inside!

Necessity to do Namaste

In your inner exploration path, whenever you feel egoistic, just do namaste. Whenever you feel sad, boring, lonely or whatever the situation is, just do namaste! Don't find a proper reason or a person to do namste? Do namaste to the creation, the wonders around you, the life around you! It will surely electrify you DEEPLY! You see a cow? Bow down. You see a mountain? Bow down. A river? Bow down. Nothing around? Bow down. Because you are still alive!

Namaskaram Readers,

Daksh Parekh.